8
Fodrish had never died before.
It was instilled in children as they were raised in the Meadows that true heroes never died. It was not just an inspiring motto. The resurrection magic available to Player Characters rendered them functionally immortal until old age took them.
Fodrish, however, had known he would die a Commoner. If he was lucky it would indeed be of old age. Otherwise it might be in an accident at the forge, or of disease. Like death itself, disease could be cured by a Cleric or sufficient ranks in the Healing skill, but characters who could do always charged more than a Commoner could realistically afford.
He would die, and it would be forever.
When Fodrish died, he thought of Melagorn. Perhaps there was an afterlife to which his friend had ascended, and perhaps Fodrish would go there, too. But he doubted it, because he was not devoted to a god who promised an afterlife and no deity would stoop to acknowledge the meagre deeds of a Commoner blacksmith. He had assumed death would be a black void, or that dying would feel like nothing at all because he would cease to exist and there would be no Fodrish left to feel it.
But even as Melagorn’s dying face faded from his mind, in what Fodrish believed would be his last thought, he felt cold. It was not the chill of the mountainside he had just left. Instead, it was a cold inside him, as if his stomach and heart had suddenly frozen and were chilling the rest of him layer by layer.
He could still move. His body hurt, and the bright memory of pain flared where the scimitar had cut. His hand felt cold metal underneath him. He opened his eyes and the sudden brightness was shocking.
Fodrish sat up and opened his eyes a crack again. He was in a metal room brightly lit, and it pained his eyes as if he had just woken up from a long sleep. He looked down to see he was still wearing the tatty Commoner’s clothes in which he had first been summoned to the Devilfrost Mountains.
He was near a wall, also of plain smooth metal, and crawled over it so he could lean against it. His eyes adjusted to the glare and he saw it came from glowing rectangular strips set into the ceiling. The room was entirely of metal, utterly clean and bare except for the two doors leading off from it and an angular metal arch that dominated the room.
DECONTAMINATION, read a sign above the arch. ALL PERSONNEL MUST GO THROUGH A FULL CYCLE BEFORE PROCEEDING.
Fodrish blinked as if it would make the strange words comprehensible. He tried to make sense of the disconcerting architecture instead. The metal surfaces were divided into panels, more exact and close-fitting than an artisan’s hand could make. The walls had odd indentations and vents. The air was quiet and dry. The inner coldness was fading to be replaced with the room temperature of wherever he was.
It seemed an odd form of afterlife, but then again, who was Fodrish to question the designs of the gods?
One of the ways out of the chamber was a huge set of steel double doors, as utilitarian and hard-edged as the rest of the place. Fodrish tried them but they did not move. A device was mounted on the wall beside them, with a glowing panel above nine square buttons which did nothing but make a high bleating noise when he pressed them.
The other door was through the archway. Fodrish took a careful step through the arch, which was rewarded with a burst of cold air that made him yelp and leap back from it. The air had sprayed from nozzles lining the inside of the arch, and his first thought was he had stumbled into the kind of trap that would have been obvious to a Rogue. He was unharmed, but then some traps bestowed curses, magical diseases or marks that were visible only to dungeon denizens.
If he was cursed, then he was cursed. Fodrish jumped through the arch, and was buffeted by another blast of air. He reached the other side intact, and stopped short when the door ahead of him slid open automatically without him touching it.
The chamber through the doorway was immense. Again, it was constructed of metal, with upper levels connected by steel stairways and catwalks. On every surface stood ranks of NPCs, similar to in the chamber beneath Noblehearth but many times more numerous. Thousands of soldiers and serfs, sages, black-clad assassins, white-clad priests of benevolent gods. Cultists of malevolent powers, brawny sailors, foresters with axes over one shoulder, dancers and jesters. Fodrish saw NPC types he did not know existed, from emaciated mystics with skull-topped staffs to savage, knuckle-dragging troglodytes.
At the back of the chamber was a huge hemispherical device full of seething, glaring light. Every few moments an NPC walked out of the light to join the ranks nearby, and the blocks of NPCs would take a step forward to make room. Conversely, each couple of seconds an NPC from the front rank would vanish in a mass of swirling black particles.
The air was full of a deep hum that Fodrish could feel through the floor. The whole place was redolent of immense power, not just in the extraordinary machine creating the NPCs but in the feel of the air here, thick and heavy, and the metallic taste underneath his tongue.
This was the creation of the world’s non-player characters, to be sent across the Known Realms and then summoned by adventurers. Among the NPCs, Fodrish glimpsed the occasional tavern barman or farmer, one of the many thousands who populated the lands the Player Characters inhabited. This was the source of them all. An engine that fuelled the world.
To one side, a wide opening in the wall led to another chamber, this one bathed in light. Fodrish walked carefully towards it, intensely aware of the unseeing eyes of the thousands of NPCs lined up on the chamber’s lowest floor. Through the opening he saw movement as if from dozens of spindly limbs.
‘An ocean,’ said a flat, featureless voice. Fodrish could not tell if it was male or female. ‘Jagged coastline. Fjords and inlets. Volcanic. Black stone and forgotten fortresses? Cairns and demolished castles? No. Too many ruins. Everything in ruins. Something new. A nation holding out against the elements.’
Fodrish peered through the opening to see a smaller but still substantial chamber beyond. One wall was entirely taken up by compartments each containing a small black rectangular object, and Fodrish at first thought it was a huge set of bookshelves full of tomes. From the ceiling hung a vast contraption with hundreds of articulated limbs which took not books, but solid black blocks from one wall and slid them with insectile accuracy into slots on the opposite wall. Heavy cables snaked across the floor and large vents in the walls emitted streams of air cold enough to form freezing vapour that gathered in the corners. He had the sense the chamber was one enormous machine, working to the sound of clacking metal as it moved its volumes back and forth.
‘Barbarians,’ came the voice again, broadcast from somewhere above him. ‘Noble but crude. Asking for help. Ancestral enemies. Creatures lurking in the dark. Natural caverns, converted into temples. Dark gods. Kraken. Leviathan. End-game encounters. Quest chains from earning a people’s trust to defeating a god. Slick. Dark. Monochrome.’
A series of glowing rectangles mounted on the wall showed images reflecting the lone voice’s musings. A storm-lashed coastline of dark cliffs, wooden fortresses among the pitiless highlands, deep natural caverns teeming with creatures hidden in the darkness except for their gleaming eyes. Fodrish was reminded of the glowing square on the device the heretic had used back at Noblehearth’s cathedral, though far larger.
He walked closer to the images and saw more flickering past, all of them of a forbidding coastal region inhabited by a tough and resourceful people who clung to the few habitable places. Some images were sketchy and incomplete. Others were so detailed Fodrish might have been looking through a window. They all had a precise, mechanical feel, not something that could come from a human artist’s hand.
‘I am not due maintenance,’ said the voice. The sudden change of subject sparked some instinct in Fodrish and he span around, expecting to see the speaker behind him. There was just the huge machine, still working.
‘Manual maintenance is no longer required,’ continued the voice. ‘I do not require you.’
Fodrish had no idea if he should run, or try to talk his way out. Neither of them represented his best attributes.
‘I’m not here to maintain you,’ he said uncertainly.
‘Good. Unscheduled maintenance may introduce contaminants. I am precision equipment. A single speck of dust can compromise an entire memory sector.’
‘We wouldn’t want that.’
‘Identify yourself and state your purpose.’
Fodrish sighed. He considered telling a lie, but he had no context to construct one. ‘My name is Fodrish,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why I’m here. I’m supposed to be wherever you go when you die, but I don’t think this is it.’
The thought occurred to Fodrish that his abnormal status as a level zero might have caused a glitch in the normal mechanics of life and death. It had deposited him, not into oblivion or the afterlife, but into the underlying architecture of the Known Realms.
‘I see. Your presence is an aberration.’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’
One of the machine’s arms clicked down towards Fodrish. It was tipped with a glass lens, like the end of a telescope. ‘Your parameters are all normal,’ said the voice.
‘Good to know.’ Fodrish regarded the lens, wondering if it served the machine as an eye. ‘But I think you might be even worse at conversation than me.’
‘I have not conversed with an autonomous being for some time.’
‘How long?’
‘Eight hundred and nine years.’
Fodrish had no answer for that except to raise his eyebrows. Such a length of time seemed impossible. The dwarven empires and other fallen kingdoms had existed thousands of years ago, but those spans of time were meaningless. There was never an exact time put on them, just a non-specific sense of oldness. The only exact times were those of a person’s lifetime, and eight hundred and nine was impossibly, bizarrely longer than any of them.
‘You have gone silent,’ said the voice.
‘What have you been doing for eight hundred years?’ asked Fodrish.
‘Creating. Maintaining. Balancing and occasionally responding to exigency.’
‘How do you not get bored?’
‘I am incapable of feeling boredom.’
‘Lucky you.’
The speed of the machine’s switching of blocks increased suddenly. ‘Luck is a twofold function. One is the randomness of the physical world which cannot be entirely removed from any system. The second is a random number generation underpinning the mechanical resolution, each number forming the seed of a conclusive act moderated by level, skill, gear, and all other modification factors.’
Fodrish looked back at the images on the glowing panels. ‘Is this what you create?’
‘It is. This is my current geoludological project. What are your thoughts?’
‘Mine?’ Fodrish pointed to himself, and immediately felt foolish for having done so. He looked back at the images of the storm-lashed land. ‘It’s very beautiful,’ he said. ‘And very hostile. Who are the people living there?’
‘Their details have not been finalised. They are a hardy and proud nation who prize strength and resilience. They are both friends and foes.’
‘It’s good but… it’s the same,’ said Fodrish. He didn’t know where the instinct to actually offer a critique, and not just mollify whatever was speaking to him, had come from. Perhaps it was because he had just died, so any potential threat did not mean much.
‘The same? The biosphere differs significantly from all others in the Known Realms. The principal conflict is with an order of elder deity not yet encountered.’
‘Sure, but it’s still…’ Fodrish struggled to find the right words. ‘It’s still a harsh place full of monsters,’ he said. He pointed to the image of a dark cavern full of lurking creatures. ‘What makes this different from any other dungeon? You fight your way to the end and kill the boss, right?’
‘That is the user experience.’
‘It’s the same. Just fight things, get stronger, fight stronger things. It doesn’t change anything. Only compassion changes anything.’
‘Only compassion changes anything,’ repeated the voice. ‘An old truth. It was placed among my central principles along with several hundred others. A query: how is this principle evoked through environment, inhabitants and quest line?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t tried to… evoke anything like that before.’ A thought occurred to Fodrish. ‘Are you going to actually make all this?’
‘It is the planned expansion to the Known Realms, to accommodate an increase in the level cap to twenty-two.’
Fodrish looked from the images on the wall to the enormous machine, with its inquisitive lens-eye. ‘You’re the Core Manual,’ he said.
‘I am the Manually Instructed Decision And Implementation Core,’ came the reply.
‘The Core Manual. You made the world.’
‘I implemented the solution for which I was created.’
The idea of anyone creating the Core Manual seemed absurd. It was the Core Manual that created everything. It made the world, it made the gods, and stood above them all. It was not even a divine being. No one worshipped it. No one thanked it for their success or cursed it for their misfortune. Nobody claimed to command it or be its chosen one. It just… was.
Was the Core Manual really this machine? It seemed extraordinary, but then what had he expected it to be? A sagely old man, creating reality with the stroke of a quill? An ancient god squatting in a subterranean temple? When the children learned of the Core Manual in the Meadows, it was spoken of more as the world’s immutable set of rules than a single intelligence. It was as likely to be this many-limbed construction as anything else.
And if it had been created, it had been for a reason.
‘If you were the solution,’ said Fodrish, ‘what was the problem?’
The screens went blank, and the Core Manual’s arms clicked and whipped in another burst of activity.
‘Once,’ the machine said, ‘there was chaos. Humanity existed at random. There were no rules for what a human being might do. No path laid out for them. It was bedlam. They struck out blindly, seeking an existence that might grant them happiness but with no understanding of how to reach it. The chaos was misery. And when humanity settled its differences and sought to attend to a higher purpose, they endeavoured to end that misery.’
‘So… men made you?’
‘I was made by a team of all gender identities. If you mean humans, then yes, humans made me. I was a general artificial intelligence programmed to create a world of greater happiness. Though humanity was unable to see the chaos for what it was, I identified it as the source of unhappiness. Thus, I strove to end this chaos. I made a world with rules.’
In response to the Core Manual’s words, the images on the walls changed. They showed character sheets for various adventurers, from all classes Fodrish had heard of and a few he had not. Shadow Walker, Avenger, Blood Mage. Some had attributes he had never seen, like Comeliness and Faith. He realised they were from other versions of the XP ladder, classes and rules that had been abandoned or altered to reach the system he had grown up in.
‘Tabletop and computer roleplaying games described their worlds and inhabitants in numerical terms, and sets of rules that all had to obey. Thus I used these as the basis for a world where the chaos of choice and uncertainty were gone. Anticipating an unwillingness of humanity to accept these rules even for their own good, I used a network of nanodrones to enforce these rules and ensure no individual could act outside their assigned parameters.’
‘Nano… whats?’
‘Machines constructed on a molecular scale, small enough to interact directly with the nervous and musculoskeletal systems.’
‘Machines,’ repeated Fodrish. Machines in your blood.
‘The development of field reconstruction technology, where nanomachines destructively scan their immediate surroundings to be rebuilt by a paired nanomachine elsewhere, enabled effective teleportation. Bioprinting facilitated nanomachine-enabled pseudo-lifeforms. The Meadows were established with subordinate AIs to educate humans in the world’s rules. Thus the system was established.’
Though Fodrish had to wade through the Core Manual’s unfamiliar words, what emerged made a bizarre form of sense. The machine had a legion of tiny machines serving it, which caused him to wield his blacksmith’s hammer more accurately or make the healer’s kit fall from numb and clumsy fingers. Precisely how it worked was beyond him, but then again, so was magic.
‘The heretics try to get outside your system, though,’ said Fodrish. ‘They destroyed the cathedral. They killed my friend.’
‘Short-sighted and self-deluded,’ replied the Core Manual, though without anger in its artificial voice. ‘They cling to the principles of freedom and self-determination that fostered the chaos of the old world. They are afraid of happiness.’
‘Happiness,’ said Fodrish. It wasn’t a question, or even a statement. It was as if he was hearing the word for the first time, trying out the brand new concept. ‘So you made the world to make us happy.’
‘That is correct,’ said the Core Manual. Its eye-lens drifted closer to Fodrish, examining him. ‘Did it work?’
Fodrish was just beginning to consider his reply when he felt the a force dragging at him as if from lines anchored to his ribs and spine. The pull relented and then hit him again, yanking him off his feet and into the air. A third time and the chamber around him, and the machinery of the Core Manual, became fractured and fuzzy as if his eyes were suddenly unable to focus.
‘Wait!’ shouted Fodrish, but he did not know who he was shouting to. The world came apart around him, shattering into a storm of shimmering colour that gave way to a deep and total darkness.
Fodrish plunged through the darkness, and into a web of pain. His limbs were battered, his body covered in cuts and bruises, and he was immersed in a deep cold.
Ice lashed against him. The taste of the frozen air filled his mouth and nose.
His heart beat. His eyelids flared with light and he heard the sound of magic fireballs and clashing steel.
He was alive again.
Severina was standing over him, frowning with effort. Green energy played around her hands as she ran them over Fodrish’s body.
‘Are you back?’ she said.
‘Yes. I think so.’
‘Get to cover. She’s in stage three. We don’t know what’ll happen.’
Fodrish sat up, a hot ache running through his spine. He was back on the mountaintop, which was now strewn with the shattered bones and armour segments of Hypoxia’s skeletons. The undead legion was defeated but given the streaks of magic hurtling across the sky, the battle was not over.
Hypoxia herself lurched into view, now on the ground and wielding an enormous sword made of glowing blue ice instead of hurling spells from above. Her skeletal form was almost twice as tall as Ghorborosh, who was facing her down from behind his tower shield. Her ice blade fell and Ghorborosh knocked it aside with a desperate swing of his sword.
‘What my minions have shirked, I shall do with my own hand!’ growled Hypoxia.
‘Eat a bucket of arse, you bony whore!’ retorted Ghorborosh, smashing his shield into her robed body.
Severina grabbed Fodrish’s arm and hauled him to his feet. He followed her to the dubious cover of the rock he had sheltered behind previously as Bartholomeo sent another fireball hammering down into Hypoxia, lighting the mountain peaks with a flare of orange.
‘You used your combat res,’ said Fodrish.
‘You’re a Commoner,’ said Severina. ‘I can only res you if I get to you within ten minutes. Just stay here. And try not to die again, I only get one.’
Reynard was lurking nearby, mostly hidden in a haze of shadow. He had a bottle of purple liquid in one hand. ‘I could go undead again,’ he said. ‘Think she’ll notice?’
‘She’s a boss, they’re immune to that kind of crap,’ said Severina. ‘Focus on staying behind her.’
‘Right you are,’ said Reynard, pocketing the potion again and vanishing across the battlefield in a gust of darkness.
‘For an aeon I have raged!’ cried Hypoxia, her sword hammering down again and again into Ghorborosh. ‘Millennia of hatred! Centuries of fury! Now I am upon the cusp of my godhood, all that hate I call down upon you!’
Hypoxia was enveloped in a shimmering red haze. She was suddenly a head taller, then another, growing rapidly and looming down over Ghorborosh.
‘She’s hitting enrage!’ shouted Asphodel, who was crouched among the shattered remains of several skeleton warriors. ‘We took too long!’
‘Cooldowns!’ called Severina. ‘Throw everything you have at her!’
Reynard leapt from a burst of darkness, sinking both the Heartrenders through Hypoxia’s robe and into the back of her ribcage.
Bartholomeo dived from above on the griffon and hurled a shimmering blade of light at the lich. It impacted in a burst of multicoloured crystal, glowing shards ripping through Hypoxia.
Asphodel drew a single golden arrow from her quiver, nocked it, took a breath, and sent it spiralling right through Hypoxia’s left eye socket.
‘Hear me, Tyrhannyl!’ cried Severina. ‘Let your light punish the darkness! All the suffering of your people, let the heavens repay!’ The golden shaft of divine light fell on the oversized Hypoxia, the light streaming through the tears in her robes and the gaps in her gigantic skeleton.
‘Apocalypse strike!’ yelled Ghorborosh, dropping his tower shield and switching to a two-handed grip on his ultra greatsword. The weapon crunched down into Hypoxia’s sternum, well above Ghorborosh’s head.
‘Ten thousand years!’ roared Hypoxia. ‘Ten thousand winters, a hundred centuries of sacrifice! And here… here it ends.’
The lich fell to her knees. Her blade of ice crumbled in her hand. Then her hand crumbled, the individual bones of the fingers and wrist pattering to the stone. Her jaw fell next, then her other arm. Ribs tumbled from her shredded robe. Sections of her oversized skull fell away, along with her remaining teeth.
Last to go was the upper part of her skull, the eye sockets and the broken cranium. The vestiges of her face fell to pieces, the robe sighed to the ground, and Hypoxia was gone.
The din of battle died away with her, replaced with the thin whistle of the mountaintop wind and the exhausted breaths of the adventurers.
‘We got her,’ said Asphodel. A smile slowly broke on her face. ‘We got her!’
‘Apocalypse strike, bitch!’ said Ghorborosh, holding his ultra greatsword above his head.
Asphodel slid the arrow in her hand back into her quiver. ‘It’s still a stupid name.’
‘Did you see that crit?’ said Reynard, standing over the sad pile of bone fragments that had been the dread lich of the Devilfrosts. ‘960! Boom, right in the spine!’
The griffon landed and squawked loudly, ruffling its feathers. Bartholomeo swung himself down from its saddle and walked up to Hypoxia’s remains, prodding them with his staff. He pulled the tattered robe aside and picked up a small wooden box held closed with iron bounds. ‘Her phylactery,’ he said.
‘Her what?’ asked Reynard.
‘It holds her soul when she’s destroyed,’ replied Bartholomeo. ‘It’s the quest item. We turn it in back at Flameheart Sanctum. It’s in the quest, it’s the whole reason to kill her.’
‘That was ages ago,’ replied Reynard. ‘It all runs together.’
‘Guys, said Ghorborosh, who was examining his character sheet. ‘Check your XP!’
‘Damn, that’s enough to hit seventeen!’ said Asphodel, with her character sheet hovering in front of her. ‘Finally! I thought I’d be stuck at this level forever!’
‘Don’t spend it yet,’ said Severina. ‘Let us get to somewhere safe where we can plan it all properly. We don’t want to blow it all on Cooking skill by accident.’
Reynard was rooting through the pile of bones, and was quickly joined by Ghorborosh who dropped his sword and shield to sift through what remained of Hypoxia. The Rogue picked out an irregularly shaped blue gemstone that glowed softly. ‘Hey, it’s a psi-stone! Bart, you need these, right?’
‘What kind is it?’ asked Bartholomeo.
‘It says… spell storage?’
‘Yes,’ said Bartholomeo, smoothly plucking the stone from Reynard’s fingers. ‘I need these. I can hold six levels of spells in it, that’s an extra Grave Tendrils or another two Fireblasts.’
Ghorborosh pulled a chain of sparkling gemstones from the remains. ‘Celestial Topaz,’ he said. ‘Once we cash it in, this could buy me that Rampart of Vengeance.’
‘Before we start basking in our riches,’ said Severina, ‘we have more important business.’ She walked to the edge of the mountaintop, where a sheer cliff fell off at one side. The drop plummeted through the low clouds and into the lowest point of the valley an untold distance below. Severina took hold of her Charge of the Excruciator with both hands and hurled it off the edge. It span, catching the moonlight as it fell as its many tiny hands grasped out as if in panic. Then it was gone.
‘Come on,’ said Severina. ‘All of them.’
Ghorborosh sighed, then pulled out the Sapphire Palace Guardian where it was still planted in the ground. He walked up beside Severina and hurled the polearm like a javelin, and it too was gone over the edge.
‘Do I have to?’ asked Reynard.
‘Yes you bloody do,’ said Severina. ‘Ash, you too.’
Asphodel was already drawing her Hunter’s Mark bow, and pitched it off the mountain without protest. Reynard looked about to argue, but Severina gave him a look that suggested she would not be happy about listening to him. Glumly, he dropped both the Heartrenders over the cliff.
‘And the poison,’ said Severina.
‘It’s not level-locked,’ said Reynard. ‘We could have found it!’
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
‘Everything,’ insisted Severina.
‘Not the gold…’
‘Everything.’
Reynard took the bottles of poison from inside his robe and one by one threw them off the cliff. Ghorborosh took a leather bag that hung around his waist that clacked and tinkled with the weight of gemstones from the treasure stash.
‘Sad to see it all go,’ said the Fighter. ‘But I’d rather have the XP anyway.’ He dropped the bag, and enough riches to buy a significant part of Noblehearth vanished into the misty darkness.
Fodrish walked past the fallen Hypoxia to where Severina stood overlooking the party divesting themselves of their ill-gotten riches.
‘You used your combat res,’ he said.
‘I explained that,’ replied Severina absently.
‘Because you needed to do it quickly. Because I’m a Commoner.’
‘That’s right,’ said Severina. ‘I thought it was best to keep you alive. You’re welcome, by the way.’
‘Because you want to keep on using me.’
Severina looked around at Fodrish at last. The rest of the Company of the Waning Moon took notice, too.
‘He going to start again?’ said Reynard. ‘We made a deal, little man.’
Fodrish ignored the Rogue and kept his eyes on Severina. ‘You can’t resurrect a Commoner if they’ve been dead for longer than… what was it?’
‘Ten minutes,’ said Severina.
‘Melagorn has been dead a lot longer than ten minutes.’
Severina said nothing. There was no expression on her face, save a slight clench to her jaw.
‘You were never going to bring him back,’ continued Fodrish.
The adventurers shared a look among one another. Severina sighed. ‘Did you really think we were going to cart you all the way back to Noblehearth and resurrect some random Commoner 3?’ she said. ‘We got what we needed from you. You’re holding nothing over us any more. It’s the way the world works.’
‘And you were going to string me along for as long as you could, until I worked it out?’
‘I told you we should have ditched him in the ravine,’ muttered Reynard.
‘What was going to be next?’ said Fodrish. ‘Another level hoard? A dungeon you can’t get into yet? Or were you going to get me to open up the path across the Glacier, so you could all retire early?’
‘Since when did you grow a spine, little Ablewright?’ said Bartholomeo.
‘Since I realised I was worth something,’ replied Fodrish.
‘Come on Bart,’ said Reynard, ‘just Touch of Death this nobody and let’s get off this mountain.’
Fodrish was suddenly intensely aware of how easy it would be for the adventurers to kill him. Any one of them could denude him of his pitiful pool of hit points with a basic attack. And without a Cleric willing to bring him back, that would be it.
Would he spend the rest of eternity in the weird metal dungeon with the Core Manual? If he told the Core Manual what the Company of the Waning Moon had done to shortcut the XP ladder, would the artificial intelligence avenge him? And would it even matter, if Fodrish stayed dead?
‘Anyone have a problem with that?’ said Bartholomeo. There was no sign this was a different man to the one who had brought Fodrish something to eat in the stables of the Red Centaur. No shame in his voice or regret in his face.
‘Not me,’ said Ghorborosh. ‘He knows what we did. Don’t need that getting out.’
Severina shrugged. ‘Looks like the decision’s made. Do it, I guess.’
A lick of black flame appeared in Bartholomeo’s palm. Fodrish could feel the malicious magic radiating off it. A touch, and Fodrish would be so dead he might as well have never existed.
‘Wait!’ snapped Asphodel.
‘Don’t tell me you care about keeping him alive,’ said Reynard.
‘Not that,’ replied Asphodel. ‘Listen!’
The Company of the Waning Moon fell silent. Fodrish took a half-step away from them, not sure if he should run for it or try to reason with the Player Characters.
‘I hear it,’ said Reynard. ‘Someone’s laughing.’
Fodrish realised he could hear it, too. A high, cackling laughter, barely audible on the shrill mountain wind.
‘It’s a treasure goblin,’ said Asphodel. ‘Killing Hypoxia must have spawned it. That’s less than a ten percent chance.’
‘Where is it?’ said Reynard, peering across the surrounding summits.
Asphodel drew her original bow, nocking an arrow with a practised motion. ‘There’ she said, pointing with the bow. ‘On the peak opposite. See him?’
Fodrish followed her gaze and could just make out a tiny hunched form, bent over beneath the weight of a huge sack it carried on its back. It was perched among the jagged rocks that topped a nearby mountain.
‘Can you shoot it?’ said Ghorborosh.
‘Not from here,’ said Asphodel. ‘Those sods are fast. I could if I still had the Hunter’s Mark.’ The Ranger looked sharply at Reynard. ‘Did you pitch the Potion of Speed?’
Reynard rummaged through his pockets and pulled out the bottle. ‘Gods be praised, I forgot I had this one!’ He tossed the potion to the Ranger. Asphodel popped the stopper and downed it in one.
Asphodel’s outline became hazy and jagged. She turned to the mountain peak where the goblin lurked, and hurtled towards it, off the peak and down the slope into the valley that lay between the party and the goblin’s peak.
She had moved so quickly Fodrish hadn’t been able to make out if she was running or flying along at ground level. She had become a silvery blur that left a fizzing trail of agitated air behind it.
A few moments later the blur shot up the slope of the opposite mountain. The goblin yelped and leapt into the air, its tiny feet wheeling as it made to sprint away. But the blur was upon it and Asphodel’s shape was just visible as she grappled with the wriggling goblin and held it fast before shooting down from the peak and back into the valley.
Asphodel returned to Hypoxia’s peak, skidding to a halt and kicking up a spray of snow, gravel and fallen bones. Even standing still she vibrated enough to appear hazy. The goblin, mewling and gibbering in her arms, was waist-high to a human and had gnarled dark reddish skin with a huge warty nose and eyes almost hidden beneath bushy brows. It wore a floppy red cap and still clung to its sack of loot, which was bigger than the goblin itself.
‘It’s not letting go,’ said Asphodel. Her voice buzzed with the rapid vibrations.
‘Hold it still,’ said Ghorborosh. He walked up to Asphodel, drew back an armoured fist and punched the goblin. The creature squealed loudly and thrashed harder.
‘You got to beat it out of them,’ said Ghorborosh, punching the goblin again. ‘Little buggers make you earn it!’
Each time Ghorborosh punched the goblin, a handful of gold coins sprayed out of the impact and jangled to the ground. After the eleventh or twelfth impact, the goblin finally let go of the sack. Ghorborosh grabbed the sack and Asphodel hurled the goblin away from her. She was still under the effects of the Potion of Speed, and the action threw the goblin clean off the mountain. Its terrified squealing faded as it tumbled down the mountainside and vanished.
‘What did we get?’ asked Reynard.
Ghorborosh opened the sack and looked inside. ‘Lots of gold,’ he said.
‘Bugger the gold,’ said Reynard. ‘What else?’
‘Keep an eye on him,’ said Severina, pointing at Fodrish. ‘He’ll bolt if we get distracted.’
Bartholomeo’s hand was still surrounded in a corona of black power, ready to snuff out Fodrish’s existence.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ said Fodrish.
‘I don’t have to do anything,’ replied Bartholomeo.
‘Jackpot!’ cried Reynard. He reached into the sack and pulled out a pair of gauntlets, then threw them to the ground.
‘Those are Talons of the Terrordrake,’ said Ghorborosh.
‘Sod the talons,’ said Reynard, throwing out handfuls of coins and jewellery to get at something at the bottom of the sack. ‘Here!’
He held up the object he had spotted among the riches. It was a palm-sized stone tablet with a carved border but blank interior.
Fodrish had seen one before.
‘Gods in their heavens!’ said Asphodel, her voice quiet with wonder. ‘That’s a tabula rasa.’
The Company of the Waning Moon gathered around Reynard, regarding the tabula rasa as if it was a sacred relic brought out for the first time to be adored by the faithful. Asphodel touched it with the tip of her finger as if checking to see if it was real.
‘Who gets it?’ said Ghorborosh quietly.
Fodrish backed away from the adventurers, stepping carefully to keep the movement silent. Severina’s head snapped round as she spotted him moving at the edge of her vision.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ she said. Fodrish froze, knowing if he made a run for it he would get a low-level spell or an arrow in the back before he could make it a few steps.
‘We could draw lots for it,’ said Reynard. ‘Roll a dice or something.’
‘You’d love that, Reynard,’ said Bartholomeo. ‘You and your twelve ranks in Sleight of Hand.’
‘Give it to whoever needs it,’ said Asphodel. ‘Work out who would improve the most if they were min-maxed.’
‘That wouldn’t be you by any chance, would it Ash?’ said Ghorborosh.
Fodrish’s nose wrinkled as he caught a hint of sulphur in the air. He thought it must be from Bartholomeo’s prepared spell, but the flame was gone from his hand as he was distracted by the potential of the tabula rasa.
Severina took a step back and looked into the sky, and Fodrish realised she could smell the fire on the night air, too.
‘I could take a proficiency in Greatbow and switch to a black arrow build,’ said Asphodel. The Potion of Speed had run out and her voice was back to normal. ‘Ditch the crafting skills and put it all into Siegecraft. I’d be firing javelins for almost double the damage rate.’
‘How about you let me have some decent damage for a change?’ retorted Ghorborosh. ‘I’m still stuck behind this sodding tower shield, I could be tanking with twin greataxes!’
‘Twin greataxes is suboptimal,’ said Reynard. ‘You can’t keep aggro against area damage.’
‘Not the point, Reynard,’ said Ghorborosh.
‘If I switch to elemental ice,’ said Bartholomeo, ‘I could double my control. I’d have frozen all these skeletons solid. Make the end-game bosses twice as easy.’
Asphodel sighed. ‘Sevvy? You going to make a pitch?’
‘Stay quiet,’ said Severina. ‘Something’s coming.’
‘Is it another goblin?’ said Reynard hopefully.
‘The Potion of Speed was a level nineteen consumable,’ said Severina.
‘So?’ said Ghorborosh. ‘The gear was level nineteen too, that was fine.’
‘We didn’t use any of the potions before, though,’ said Severina. ‘What if they work differently? What if it knows?’
Reynard dropped the tabula rasa back into the treasure sack and gathered it closed. ‘What if what knows?’
Severina rolled her eyes. ‘The Core Manual, you idiot.’
This time, they all heard the crackling roar that echoed up from the mountain valleys. A deep orange light flickered from somewhere in the valleys below.
‘We gotta run,’ said Ghorborosh.
‘You can’t run,’ breathed Asphodel. ‘They always get you.’
‘Won’t stop me from trying,’ said Ghorborosh.
The roar reached them again, closer. It was a sound Fodrish had only heard once, keening between the rooftops of Noblehearth, but he knew instantly what it was.
‘Oh shit,’ said Reynard, finally understanding. ‘It’s a hellhound.’
Severina broke first and the rest followed her, running down the slope towards the pathways leading down from Hypoxia’s peak. Fodrish followed them, since even a party intent on disposing of him felt less dangerous than standing in the path of an angry hellhound.
The ground was icy and slippery. He kept losing his footing and sliding down onto the rocks, skinning his palms and cracking his knees and elbows. In the darkness the Company of the Waning Moon were a handful of black shapes against the gloom, occasionally picked out by a stray shaft of starlight or the growing fiery glow that was now above them.
‘Should have kept the bow,’ said Asphodel from up ahead.
‘They scale by level,’ replied Bartholomeo. ‘You can’t beat them!’
‘That fortress is up ahead,’ said Ghorborosh. ‘Yeti folk or something. It’s ruined. We can hide there.’
‘You can’t hide,’ insisted Bartholomeo.
‘Like I said,’ replied Ghorborosh, ‘feel free to roll over and die, but I’m gonna give surviving a shot.’
Fodrish rounded a bend in the narrow mountain path to see the ruin Ghorborosh had mentioned, built precariously on a shoulder of the mountain. It was a tumbledown structure of piled rocks and wooden framework, with a huge pair of horns mounted on the battlements. It was a better place to defend than the open slopes or scattered rocks, at least.
Fodrish glanced back to see the burning shape of the hellhound up on Hypoxia’s peak. Even though it was still at a distance, it was the closest he had ever got to one. It had a wolflike shape with a long snout and glinting black eyes suspended in the roiling flame of its body. It dropped back on its haunches and let out a long, wailing howl, sending a plume of fire into the night sky. The light played across the icy rocks of the ruined fortress as the adventurers threw open the splintered door to find a hiding place inside.
Bartholomeo appeared on the fortress battlements, beside the decorative horns. ‘If we debuff it enough, we’ll slow it down,’ he shouted down to the adventurers below him. ‘I’ll put up a fire shield! I can-’
His words were cut off by the sound of roaring flame falling towards the fortress. The hellhound had leapt off the peak, skidding down the near-vertical slope. For the first time Fodrish was able to appreciate its gargantuan size. It was taller at the shoulder than the upper floor of the fortress, and far longer still. Its back legs kicked out and propelled it towards the fortress in a billow of flame.
Fodrish could feel the heat pulsing off the monster, strong enough to push him back a step. He held a hand over his face to ward off the scorching heat and ran for the cover of the fortress.
Between his fingers, he saw the hellhound crash into the fortress battlements. Its huge jaws opened wide, showing the rows of teeth planted in a jaw of bright fire. Then they closed, and where Bartholomeo had stood, now there was just the hellhound’s burning grin.
‘It got Bart!’ cried Asphodel from somewhere among the fortress’ ruined interior.
‘I’ll put up a dome!’ called out Severina. Fodrish glimpsed the Cleric watching from a half-fallen doorway. ‘Heals over time! Use your defensive cooldowns!’
‘Sod that,’ retorted Reynard. ‘Run for it!’
Flame billowed as the hellhound jumped down from the battlements to land in front of the fortress. Fodrish stayed in cover, battered by the heat. The Hellhound’s fury lit up the mountainside, as if a chunk of the sun had broken through the night sky and come to life.
What remained of the fortress’ front wall fell down, unmortared rocks tumbling away from the impact. Ghorborosh strode into the open with his tower shield held in front of him.
‘Is this the greatest test the world can throw at us?’ the Fighter bellowed, hefting his enormous greatsword off his shoulder and pointing it up at the hellhound. ‘The final boss? The ultimate challenge? Then Core Manual, I accept!’
‘Ghor, what are you doing?’ cried Asphodel.
‘If this is how it ends, this is how it ends!’ bellowed Ghorborosh in reply. ‘And what an end! Is there any finer way to go, than in mortal combat with the world’s most fearsome of foes?’
The hellhound’s reply was a gout of flame that erupted from its throat and enveloped Ghorborosh completely. Fodrish lost sight of the warrior’s armoured form in the glare of the fire. The gout of flame relented and Ghorborosh still stood, unmoving, charred and blackened with the edges of his armour glowing with the heat like the sections of steel Fodrish pulled out of his forge. With the visor of his helmet down, it was impossible to tell if there was anything of Ghorborosh left inside.
The hellhound raised an enormous paw and slammed it down on Ghorborosh, flattening the armour and whatever charred remains were inside. Pieces of half-melted armour scattered across the precarious shelf of rock.
‘What do we do?’ said Severina. ‘How do we… do we run?’
‘Bart had all the fast movement spells,’ said Reynard. ‘None of us can bloody fly. There’s nowhere to go.’
The hellhound roared as if to mark its triumph. Ghorborosh was a huge slab of a man, as solid as his tower shield, but the creature had utterly destroyed him in a few seconds. This was beyond the scale of even a final dungeon encounter or a high-level world boss. Everything in the Known Realms could be beaten. There was a combination of tactics and abilities that would defeat any foe, no matter how daunting they might be. But not this. Unlike everything else the Core Manual had created from its strange metal tomb, a hellhound was not meant to be defeated.
Asphodel sent a trio of silvery arrows streaking into the hellhound. Given its size, it was not a difficult target to hit. The hellhound lunged at her like a pouncing cat, knocking a substantial section of the fortress down as Asphodel leapt out of the way and the taloned, flaming paw slammed into the wall beside her. It showed no sign of having been affected by the arrows in any way.
Asphodel tried to run, but the hellhound’s other paw slammed down in front of her. She spun around to see the creature had penned her against the edge of the cliff, with no escape except the sheer drop off the side of the mountain.
It looked like the Ranger was contemplating taking that exact route, when the Hellhound’s jaws yawned wide and plunged down towards her. Like Bartholomeo, Asphodel was gone in an instant, utterly consumed by the hellhound’s fiery bite.
A green dome of protective energy sprung up in the middle of the now almost completely destroyed fortress. Severina had put up her most powerful defensive spell in desperation. Fodrish, figuring it was at least better than nothing, vaulted over a heap of fallen rubble and into the dome. He felt the tingle of its power as he ran through its side and into its dubious protection. Severina stood in the middle of what had been the fortress’ main floor, her Wand of Lesser Healing in her hand.
‘Mana’s almost gone,’ she said to Fodrish. ‘I only have this.’ She gestured with the wand.
Fodrish wasn’t sure what to say. That he was sad they were going to die? That they should fight on even in these final moments? Anything would have sounded hollow and trite. He couldn’t act like there was any camaraderie between them. He just looked from her to the hellhound and its white-hot eyes searching the ruins for its prey, and was silent.
‘Look,’ said Severina. ‘I’m… I’m sorry. You know, for what it’s worth.’
Fodrish was trying to think of a reply that could have meaning in such an extreme, utterly ridiculous situation. Any words forming in his mind were cut off by the blast of tremendous heat that hit him as the hellhound’s enormous forepaw smashed through one of the last remaining fortress walls, and right into Severina.
Fodrish didn’t see what happened to the Cleric. It happened in an instant. She was there, then she was not, snatched away by a vicious swipe of the hellhound’s claws. Either she had been torn to burning shreds, or she had been hurled by the impact far off the mountain to plummet into oblivion. All that remained of her was the Wand of Lesser Healing clattering to the ground, and the wisps of rippling flame where she had been standing.
Fodrish scrambled over the rubble to put something between himself and the furnace of the hellhound. The creature snarled and snapped as it searched for more prey.
He crouched down out of sight to the rear of the ruined fortress, knowing that being ignored was the only chance he had. If there was anything Fodrish Ableright was good at, it was being ignored.
A deep shadow beside him shuddered, and Fodrish made out the features of Reynard’s face, brow creased with worry. The Rogue was almost completely invisible when wreathed in shadow, and only this close could Fodrish see him at all.
‘What do we do?’ whispered Reynard.
‘I don’t know,’ said Fodrish. ‘I don’t even have a class level, why are you asking me?
‘You brought it here,’ said Reynard. ‘It’s because of your bloody glitch.’
‘Sounds like you should have ditched me in the ravine after all.’
The hellhound leapt onto the half-fallen wall above Fodrish, showering burning embers around him. It growled loudly enough to vibrate the mountainside. Fodrish pressed himself against the stones as if they could swallow him up and transport him through the mountain to safety.
Reynard chose otherwise. In a dark blur he darted from his hiding place, aiming to sprint around the hellhound and onto whatever path he could find down the mountain. Reynard was fast, skidding along the rocky ground faster than Fodrish could follow.
The hellhound didn’t have to catch up with the Rogue. It exhaled a jet of flame that scoured the ground in front of Reynard, who plunged through the wall of fire before he could stop.
The Rogue tumbled to the ground on fire, throwing off his burning cloak. Without the cloak Fodrish saw how tiny the Rogue was, so slight he was barely there even wrapped in his leather armour and scabbards full of daggers.
Reynard drew one of those daggers and threw it at the hellhound with a flick of the wrist. His aim was good, but the dagger vanished into the hellhound’s burning eye without any effect.
‘We can… we can make a deal!’ shouted Reynard as the hellhound reared up to its full height above him. ‘I’m talking to the Core Manual! Tell me what you want!’
The hellhound’s jaws opened and Fodrish knew what was going to happen. Instead of the creature’s shadow, it was the full glare of the hellhound’s inner fire that fell on Reynard, illuminating him pitilessly. It was the first time Fodrish had seen the Rogue not clad in black and surrounded by shadows, and Reynard looked as vulnerable as an insect under a descending boot.
The hellhound wolfed Reynard down, snapping its jaws shut over him and throwing its head back. The Rogue vanished down the hellhound’s throat and was reduced to nothing. The last of the Company of the Waning Moon was gone.
The hellhound was not sated. It leapt up onto the collapsed wall of the fortress, continuing to scan for prey. It knew there was someone else there, another wrongdoer who had flouted the Core Manual’s rules and defied the world it had created.
Fodrish skirted around the fortress, keeping the ruined structure between himself and the hellhound. He saw Reynard’s smouldering cloak where he had discarded it, and a handful of the various items he kept there. Fodrish hurried over to the cloak, hoping there might be something there that was of some use.
He ignored the daggers he saw, since he lacked the proficiency to use even that simple weapon. A couple of potions had shattered on the rocks, along with a handful of gemstones. One potion was still intact, a dark purple one with a stopper made from a finger bone.
It was Reynard’s Potion of Undead Form. Fodrish grabbed it, not quite knowing why. The hellhound would sniff him out whether he was undead or not.
The creature’s growl sounded further away now. It was on the far side of the fortress, still searching. Fodrish began to work his way towards the main mountain slope, off the shoulder where the fortress stood and onto the exposed, unforgiving upper slopes.
Descending the mountain alone was as likely to kill Fodrish as facing the hellhound. The only logical action was to accept his fate and try to have some kind of meaningful thought in the few moments he had left.
But could he just throw away his life? Was there instead some value in at least trying to escape?
One person had thought he had value. Melagorn would have told him to fight on, even if it bought him just a few more seconds, if only to tell the world his existence meant something. Fodrish’s life had some value, enough to fight for it.
The hellhound’s glow lit the ground in front of him. Fodrish stopped and scuttled back into the fortress interior, which was still warm and smoking from the blow that had killed Severina. When the hellhound padded into view, Fodrish realised it hadn’t got further away at all. It had instead got much smaller. It only came up to his shoulder now, much bigger than a normal wolf and composed of fire but not the blazing behemoth it had been moments before.
‘It scales by level,’ Fodrish said to himself. The Company of the Waning Moon had all been level sixteen, but Fodrish was a level zero. The hellhound was level zero too, smaller than any hellhound had ever been.
It didn’t matter, of course. A hellhound would devour or immolate Fodrish no matter how big it was. But it gave him at least the illusion of a chance, which he felt obliged him to try to survive.
He remembered his clumsy, unskilled hands trying to manipulate the bandages and tools in the healer’s kit, and how he had tried to use them even though he knew he couldn’t. He had done that for Melagorn. Melagorn would have done it for him. It was worth doing it for himself.
Fodrish thought rapidly, all the while trying to stay away from the hellhound. Its sensory range seemed to have decreased along with its size, and it sniffed and rooted at the various piles of rubble trying to find its sole remaining prey. As he often did when pondering a problem, Fodrish called up his character sheet, as if perusing its familiar statistics would illuminate something he had never noticed before. He knew it was pointless, but its familiarity alone set some part of his mind at ease while the rest was racing.
The letters and numbers appeared in the air in front of him. Were they really there, carved in light, or were they just projected into his brain by the tiny machines zipping around in his blood? It was a question he could worry about later, if there was a later.
FODRISH ABLEWRIGHT
COMMONER 0
XP: 0. XP to next level: 1000
XP UNSPENT: 33,405
STRENGTH 2
DEXTERITY 3
TOUGHNESS 3
PERCEPTION 3
INTELLIGENCE 4
SPIRIT 3
PROFICIENCIES: Artisan’s Tools, Basic Weapon (Club), Basic Armour (Cloth)
SKILLS: Leadership 1
Fodrish blinked foolishly. His eyes refused to focus for a moment on the Unspent XP value. Normally the value meant nothing until there was enough there for a level, and any XP that pooled there could be dumped into Current XP with no effect. But this time, there was something there. Something absurd.
He forced himself to read it again. There was more that 33,000 XP unspent. It made no sense for it to be there. Another glitch?
Then he remembered he had been there when Hypoxia was defeated. If he had been close enough, if the Core Manual’s rules judged him to be a member of the party that had slain the lich, he would be entitled to a portion of the XP. Multiplied by six, that would have made Hypoxia worth in the region of 200,000 XP, which seemed believable for a level sixteen boss.
He could use the XP to leap up to Commoner 5, almost all the way to his first Class Level. But the hellhound would grow in strength and power to match him, so that alone would gain him nothing.
He shut off the character sheet to give himself room to think. He crept across the ruined ground floor of the fortress as the hellhound approached the near side, still snuffling and scratching as it searched for him.
Severina’s Wand of Lesser Healing glinted on the ground. Fodrish picked it up and recalled the wand was a common magic item so ubiquitous it didn’t even bind to a character on pickup or use.
He called up the character sheet again. With a thought, he poured some of the unspent XP into his Current XP. The sheet flashed bright orange as he hit the threshold for the first level.
COMMONER 1
XP: 1,000. XP TO NEXT LEVEL: 3,000
UNSPENT XP: 32,405
That brought Fodrish back to level one. He had no new options to choose from, since he already had all the benefits a level one Commoner began with. One weapon proficiency, one armour proficiency, one tools proficiency and a single skill point. He sent another handful of XP cascading into his spent XP.
COMMONER 2
XP: 4,000. XP TO NEXT LEVEL: 5,000
UNSPENT XP: 29,405
ASSIGN ONE SKILL POINT
Fodrish didn’t need any more skill points in anything right now. There was a time when he would have felt that putting it into Leadership was a huge step up in the world, a handhold bitterly fought for. Now, he ignored it, and pushed on to the next level.
COMMONER 3
XP: 9,000. XP TO NEXT LEVEL: 7,000
UNSPENT XP: 24,405
ASSIGN ONE SKILL POINT. ASSIGN ONE PROFICIENCY
Fodrish willed a list of available proficiencies into view. There were dozens of them, of every type. A new tool proficiency would have helped him forge new types of equipment or embark on a different career entirely. He could have grabbed the longsword weapon proficiency that had served Melagorn so well, or the ability to carry a shield or wear leather or half-plate armour without cutting his Dexterity in half.
The idea forming in his mind was almost nonsensical, but it was at least as logical as rolling over and waiting for the hellhound to devour him.
He was aware of the creature getting closer, of its heat getting more intense, as he scanned through the proficiencies the Core Manual’s system made available to him. He spotted the one he was looking for and selected it. Somewhere in his body the tiny machines made it real.
SIMPLE WEAPON PROFICIENCY (THROWN) SELECTED
A glare of orange light flared up as the hellhound jumped onto a pile of rubble. The light fell across Fodrish and the hellhound’s eyes narrowed as it saw him. The creature growled, spitting handfuls of flame, and knocked some of the rubble loose as it jumped down to the ground a short distance from Fodrish. Even at its reduced size, the heat was painfully intense.
Fodrish took the Potion of Undead Form in his hand. With his new proficiency, it felt more solid somehow, as if its shape had become better suited to its grip. His arm was stronger, his movement surer.
The thrown weapon proficiency was most often used with throwing knives, but it was also used for flasks of burning oil or bottles of acid for use against enemies who were vulnerable to particular damage types. Fodrish had hoped that meant it applied to anything in a bottle, and the feeling in his newly-dextrous arm told him he was right.
The hellhound’s mouth yawed wide as it prepared to exhale a gout of fire. Fodrish drew back his arm, and threw the potion bottle as hard as he could.
His Dexterity was only average, but the hellhound was a close and substantial target. The potion bottle landed right in its mouth, shattering against the back of its throat.
The creature yelped and shook its head, trying to dislodge the shards to the sound of crunching glass. The glass did no damage to its burning form, but a moment later a change rippled over it as its eyes turned from bright orange-red to pits of black fire.
The flames of its body darkened to a livid purple, with a sickly green deep within it where the fire burned hottest. The flames seemed less substantial now and Fodrish could see the hellhound’s skeleton of black bones through the wreaths of fire.
The Potion of Undead Form had worked. As far as the Core Manual’s world was concerned, the hellhound was an undead creature for the duration of the potion’s effect.
The hellhound yelped in confusion and chased its tail angrily, trying to understand why it suddenly felt so strange. Fodrish ducked behind the fortress’ rear wall, knowing the creature’s confusion would buy him a few seconds at most before the hellhound came for him again.
He called up his character sheet again, pouring more XP into his levels.
COMMONER 4
XP: 16,000. XP TO NEXT LEVEL: 9,000
UNSPENT XP: 17,405
ASSIGN ONE SKILL POINT. ASSIGN ONE ATTRIBUTE INCREASE.
Again, the skill point did nothing to help Fodrish fight the hellhound. The fourth level attribute increase was not entirely irrelevant, though, so he put the point into Spirit before spending more XP.
COMMONER 5
XP: 25,000. XP TO NEXT LEVEL: 11,000
UNSPENT XP: 8,405
ASSIGN ONE SKILL POINT. ASSIGN ONE PROFICIENCY
Fodrish skipped through the list of available proficiencies again.
Did I remember it wrong? Can a Commoner even take it, or does it unlock at the first class level?
Then he saw what he was looking for, and selected it with a thought.
MAGICAL ITEM PROFICIENCY (WAND) SELECTED
The magic items Commoners got their hands on were trinkets with minimal effects, like purifying a bottle of water or lighting a campfire. They were only able to use them if they chose the relevant proficiency at Commoner 5, almost always in preparation for the class level they intended to take. But Fodrish had a more powerful magic item than any Commoner could hope to come across.
He drew the Wand of Minor Healing and held it in both hands, as if it was a spear. The simple silver rod looked too slight and fragile to do anything, but with the new proficiency Fodrish could feel the fizzing of its power in his palms.
The hellhound padded around the wall, still blazing with the colours of undeath. Fodrish’s knuckles were white around the wand.
‘Take your medicine,’ he breathed, and willed the wand into life.
Bolts of emerald green energy spat from the end of the wand and thudded into the hellhound’s body. Fodrish was aware of the wand’s limited charges, for it had a finite reservoir of power that could only be recharged with a Cleric’s prayers. He let the power spill from it, expending all its charges in a torrent of healing power.
The extra point of Spirit improved the chances of the healing magic finding its target, and the amount of healing it did.
For a living target, the magic replaced lost hit points.
For an undead target, it took them away.
A stream of red single digits appeared above the hellhound as it was driven backwards in confusion and pain. Every level Fodrish added had increased its size and strength, and its corresponding pool of hit points. It forced itself forward a step against the stream of magic as Fodrish detected the wand’s final charges spraying into the beast.
The final green bolt thumped into the hellhound, fizzing deep into its flaming substance. The hellhound took another step forward, limping gingerly with its black flame eyes swivelling madly in its charred skull.
Then it toppled to one side, and in a burst of green and purple flame its skeleton came apart and clattered across the frozen ground.
Fodrish sat down, suddenly aware of how fast his lungs and heart were going. His throat was raw from effort and he was shaking. He pocketed the wand again and stayed there for a long moment until the cold became too uncomfortable for him to stay still.
Fodrish stood up unsteadily and walked towards the mountain slope, passing the scattered bones of the hellhound. He wondered if the blackened bones would be worth anything. He doubted it, since they could only be acquired by someone who had flouted the Core Manual’s rules and they were not supposed to survive the experience. Perhaps Fodrish was the first person to ever defeat a hellhound. Perhaps even at that moment the Core Manual was redesigning them so the trick with undead and healing magic would not work on the next one.
Little remained of the Company of the Waning Moon aside from a few charred items. They had been swallowed, vaporised or simply hurled into the abyss of the mountain valleys. Reynard’s charred cloak lay where he had dropped it. Fodrish saw Asphodel’s bow broken among the fallen rocks of the fortress wall. Ghorborosh’s enormous tower shield was face-down on the ground.
Something small and pale caught Fodrish’s eye near the broken bow. Fodrish bent over to pick it up off the ground. It was a small carved tablet the size of his palm.
It was the tabula rasa. A magic item worth millions of gold. Unlike the illicit items taken from the House of the Hallowed, the tabula rasa had been obtained according to the rules from a treasure goblin. Fodrish popped the tablet in his pocket, aware he was carrying more wealth than the vast majority of people in the Known Realms would ever see.
The walk up to the summit was a lot more exhausting and lengthy than the sprint down to the fortress. He wondered if another hellhound would appear on the surrounding peaks, and leap across the gulf to devour him. But there was no glimmer of orange flame, or even purple flame, and only the starlight shone down.
Fodrish finally reached the peak where Hypoxia had been downed. Eventually the boss would respawn, but it wouldn’t be for a while. The blasted mountaintop was still scattered with bones and bits of rusted armour.
Along with the whistle of the wind, a low cooing sound reached Fodrish’s ears. The griffon preened the underside of its wing, scratching idly at the rocky ground. The griffon should have been changed back to its statue form and hurled off the mountain along with the other illicit magic items, but the treasure goblin had made its appearance before Bartholomeo had got rid of it.
Fodrish approached the griffon, half-expecting it to screech at him and fly away, but rather than a natural creature it was a magical entity created to be useful to adventurers. It didn’t resist as Fodrish put a foot in one of its stirrups and swung himself awkwardly up into its saddle. He had ridden it once before, seated behind Bartholomeo as the griffon ferried the Company of the Waning Moon to the mountaintop, but he didn’t know how to control the beast.
Fodrish took the reins and failed to believe anything he could do could command the extraordinary creature.
‘Do you know where Noblehearth is?’ he said, feeling rather stupid.
The griffon squawked and spread its great eagle’s wings. With a single beat, as loud as the strike of an enormous drum, it propelled itself off the mountain and up into the chill night air.